Island recording artist Jessie Reyez has been named the first featured performer in YouTube’s expanded “Artist on the Rise,” which was launched last year as a feature on the platform’s Trending tab but is now expanded into a larger program that includes promotion and programming within the site, advertising, social and fan events at YouTube Spaces.

Reyez is an outspoken 26-year-old Colombian-Canadian singer-songwriter who received the Juno Award for Breakthrough Artist of the year (Canada’s equivalent of the Grammys) and partnered with Calvin Harris on the track “Hard to Love”; she’s already clocked 22.6 million views for her hit “Figures.”

“[Universal Music Group CEO] Lucian Grainge invited me to his Grammy Week showcase and I saw her perform there and I was just blown away, said Lyor Cohen, YouTube Global Head of Music. “I had no idea she was so outspoken, I only know she’s hugely talented.”

Related

The program will probably be monthly, but “it’s not cookie-cutter,” he continued. We may be inspired to do it more often, although finding remarkable artists is now a commodity. We are going from being a deal-centric organization to a partner-centric one with labels, managers and artists. We want deep immersive relationships, and working with new artists before they break big is important to the DNA of YouTube.”

“First off, thank you YouTube,” Reyez said via email. “I feel honored — to have ‘inaugural’ anywhere near my name is dope, and on Artist on the Rise is even crazier. I hope everyone enjoys what we’re making… and if not, feel free to blow up the comments, lol!”

Island EVP/GM Eric Wong said: “We’re thrilled that Jessie Reyez is the first artist chosen for YouTube’s expanded Artist on the Rise program. Jessie is already making a mark with her immense talent and attracting a passionate fanbase around the world. With support from Lyor and his team, we’re confident Jessie will continue to reach even greater heights of success.”

Sign Up for Daily Insider Newsletter

Chinese video streaming firm iQIYI lost over $1.3 billion in 2018, as revenues and subscriber numbers ballooned. The deepening losses reflected ever higher spending on original content production. Announcing its first full-year financials since a March IPO that launched it onto the NASDAQ, iQIYI said that it lost $1.3 billion (RMB9.1 billion) last compared with [...]

Roku wants to become a billion-dollar company in 2019, and invest more in its ongoing international expansion. The streaming-device maker told investors on Thursday that it expects to generate between $1 billion and $1.025 billion this year, and that international growth was one of its key investment areas for 2019. Roku made these announcements as [...]

Joe Simon has been tapped as chief technology officer at Vice Media. The newly created role will include oversight of data analytics, engineering, information technology, media operations, media technology, post production, and systems management. Prior to Vice, Simon spent three years as Encompass Digital Media’s chief operating officer. Previously he held the chief technology officer [...]

AT&T, one month after it thought it was safe to advertise on YouTube again, said it is pulling all advertising spending from the world’s biggest video platform. The telco joins a boycott by marketers alarmed by the discovery that a secret group of child predators has been using YouTube to make sexual comments about kids. [...]

Manhattan is getting a location-based virtual reality (VR) pop-up, courtesy of Future of Storytelling: The temporary Story Arcade will open its doors in the Starrett-Lehigh building this coming Saturday, and host a number of VR experiences, including Felix & Paul Studio’s “Traveling While Black,” Fable’s “Wolves in the Walls” and MWM Immersive’s immersive theater VR [...]

Amy Winehouse will not be “Back to Black” in a holographic live tour after all. The late British singer, who died in 2011, was to be featured in a stage show slated to launch near the end of 2019. But the producer of the show, BASE Hologram, has indefinitely postponed plans for the Winehouse show, [...]

Jennifer Lopez is the latest celebrity to hop on TikTok, the short-form video app owned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance — more proof of the app’s growing traction, and reflective of media companies’ desire to reach its young-skewing base. Lopez had a very specific aim: to get fans excited about “World of Dance,” the NBC [...]